Star Snow Leopard Seeds Use 32bit Kernel, Drivers by Default
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 18th Aug 2009 18:46 UTC
Mac OS X Even though Apple has been hyping up the 64bit nature of its ucpoming Snow Leopard operating system, stating it will be the first Mac OS X release to be 64bit top-to-bottom, reality turns out to be a little bit different so far. With the current Snow Leopard seed, only Xserve users get the 64bit kernel and drivers - all other Macs default to 32bit. By holding down the '6' and '4' keys during boot, you can to boot into full 64bit mode - that is, if your Mac supports it. As it turns out, some Macs with 64bit processors cannot use the 64bit kernel because the EFI is 32bit. Note: I should have included in the article that 64bit applications will run just fine (including benefits) on a 32bit kernel in Mac OS X. Since this was already possible in Leopard, I assumed people were well aware of that. Turns out some were not, so my apologies for that.
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grabberslasher
Member since:
2006-02-09

They don't control every other piece of hardware or app that uses kernel extensions!

If you're booted in 64bit mode, then VMWare (or Parallels) will refuse to run.

That, alone, would be reason enough for Apple to disable K64 by default until everyone's on the same page.

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BluenoseJake Member since:
2005-08-11

That would seem to be either:

a) outside of Apple's control, release with 64bit turned on, and then let people who need those apps run in 32bit mode. There's always boot camp in the interim.

b) fix their kexts so those apps run. I have no problems running 32bit vmware on 64bit Windows, or 64Bit linux, so it's obviously not vmware that is the problem.

c) Trumpet to the world that OS X 10.6 will be 64bit from top to bottom, and then not turn it on, confusing some people, pissing others off, and generally being Apple.

Edited 2009-08-19 09:24 UTC

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